Heart's Hopscotch
by Juliet'sReplacement
Summary: Quick slip-in scene for the episode "The Shakespeare Code." "Spoilers." Oneshot drabble.


**So, here's a quick drabble for Doctor Who… A quick instance in between lines of a particular episode, **_**the Shakespeare Code**_**… As Professor River Song would say, "**_**Spoilers!**_**"**

**No, seriously. If you haven't seen at least the end of Season Two, don't watch (and by season two, I mean the end of the first season with Ten(David Tennant)). It involves stuff about Rose that you may or may not have seen.**

**You have been warned.**

**Now, picking up the slack in a scene of **_**the Shakespeare Code**_**:**

* * *

The Doctor's head whipped around as Martha just crumpled. "What did you do?!" he demanded, alternating between glaring up at the young Carrionite and checking Martha's vital signs.

"Hmm. Only sleeping, alas," she murmured, her gaze half-lidded. If ever there was anything to show her lack of concern of the situation, it would have been that. "It's curious," she continued to thin air, watching Martha, "The name has less impact. She's somehow out of her time." Once again, the Doctor felt a pang of remorse for having (yet again) dragged a human around with him only to get themselves hurt. His attention was unceremoniously dragged back to the present problem as the Carrionite pointed at him with a flourish.

"And as for you, Sir Doctor—" she broke off, suddenly, and a slight smirk tugged at her lips. "Fascinating. There is no name." Both of the Doctor's hearts threw in an extra beat to their rhythm as she stated the fact calmly, almost as though she were merely telling him the time of day. Damn the Carrionites and their wordplay. The alien in the guise of a young woman tilted her head slowly to the left as she considered the man before her, almost in the way a snake might a bird. "Why would a man hide his title in such despair?" she whispered, almost seductively. "Oh… but look." Her quiet voice gained a more sinister tone to it now, and in it he heard the sick and twisted part of her that wanted all creatures to suffer as she had. "There's still one word with a power that still aches."

The Doctor's head snapped up, his eyes livid. "The naming won't work on me." If anyone had looked, they would have identified the deep, furious anger that was rarely glimpsed, and was even scarcer coming from the Doctor.

"But your heart grows cold," she murmured breathily, "The North wind blows, and carries down the distant… Rose?"

_Rose._

Both heartbeats in his chest sang mournfully of days long past—days spent with a kindred spirit. One who was now gone, lost… forever.

* * *

"Rose!"

The blonde jerked her head back towards the room at large—or more accurately, towards the doorway. "Oh no, oh no oh no oh no," she muttered feverishly, quickly pressing a button on the computer monitor and diving for her closet. She scrambled for the darkest corner just as she heard her mother open the door to her room, and froze. As it always did when you were hiding from something horrifying, your breaths (though silent) seemed much too loud. She had come to that conclusion while still travelling with… him.

_And then he had to go and send me away to this parallel universe,_ she thought bitterly.

Jackie's footsteps moved into the room, pausing at the end of the bed. "Rose?" she called again, but the named lady didn't move. She had just managed to crack her closet door, and through the two-inch-wide band of light, Rose witnessed her mother walk by again. _It's only a matter of time,_ her subconscious whispered. _She's looked everywhere else._

But maybe it won't occur to her to look here, Rose argued mutely. After all, she would have been the first to admit that her mother wasn't all that observant. To her extensive relief, though, Jackie sighed exasperatedly and walked out of her daughter's room, yelling, "You're going to have to come out sometime, you know! And also, Mickey wanted to talk to you! Said he knew something about some laser contraption on steroids…?"

The end of Jackie's words were quieted by her feet carrying her out of Rose's room, but she was still clearly audible. Rose let out a long breath, resting her head against the dark wall. Her closet was the tiny place that her mother had never thought to check, but it couldn't be long now. This was the only place she could go. This tiny closet in a large room in the huge house in this completely different world… Where _he_ had left her. He couldn't even take her back with him. God only knew he had time to before her father whisked her away for that last time.

_But your heart grows cold,  
The north wind blows,  
And carries down the distant…_

_Rose?_

Her heart wrenched.

"What?" she muttered, looking around. But it was stupid, looking for a voice that hadn't really been there in a dark three by six closet.

_But… someone said my name,_ she thought determinedly, sitting up. She rubbed at her chest absently, wondering what the bloody hell it was when her heart felt like it had just tried to vault its way out of her ribcage.

Strangely, though… the feeling (though a little uncomfortable) wasn't dissimilar to the hopscotch her pulse played when she saw the Doctor…

* * *

The Doctor shot to his feet, his anger propelling him up faster than the purely human eye could follow. A Time Lord's or a Carrionite's could follow it just fine. "Oh, big mistake," he spat, temper finally boiling over. "Cause that name keeps me fighting." He ignored the Carrionite's casual glance up and down, seeing what a Time Lord was made of when angry.

Actually, angry didn't quite cover it.

Furious just might.

Time for a change of subject. Anything to distract himself from the swirl of memories that had been drudged up in his hearts like a sickness…

"The Carrionites vanished. Where did you go?"

**Just a thought. If, when Carrionite-lady said Rose's name, the Doctor had a painful reaction… **

**Well, when they speak your name, you're supposed to die, right? In a parallel universe, can't it still affect you if it's specifically YOU they're talking about? Rose would have felt SOMETHING, right? Yeah? **

**No? **

***shrug* It was just a thought.**


End file.
